Xeround pulls the plug on cloud database service

Updated: Xeround is shutting down its MySQL database service next week. An email went out May 1 alerting users of the free that they should move their database instance to another service before midnight eastern time May 8 to avoid downtime. Users of the paid plan have till May 15th to move.

“It is with genuine sadness that we inform you that Xeround’s service will be terminated in the course of the coming weeks, across all of our currently active data centers.”

Xeround’s free and paid service options run on Amazon Web Services; Rackspace, AppFog, Heroku and HP Cloud. The company could not be reached for comment but rivals are circling — ClearDB and Cloudant posted tweets to woo Xeround users.

This news has to be sobering given the number of cloud-based database services dotting the landscape. The company had raised more than $30 million in funding starting in 2005. Xeround investors include Benchmark Capital, Giza Venture Capital, Ignition Partners and Trilogy Partnership.

This story was updated at 4:38 a.m. PST to add the closing date of the paid service, a link to the Xeround blog post, and information on Xeround funding and investors.